The best of Poenamo hits the modern reader with a slap of historical recognition, thanks to its immediacy and the hindsight we now bring to it. In one episode, the young John Logan Campbell is attempting to buy pigs from a rangatira of Ngati Whatua. Suddenly, the rangatira brings a great pile of sovereigns from his blanket. The coins are, he explains, “te utu mo te whenua – the payment for the land”. Parts of the Waitemata shore have just been sold to the Crown, transforming Campbell’s future and New Zealand history by enabling a new Pakeha settlement called Auckland.
Campbell’s ...

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